Land Grafts and Fraction Reductions
by Quillon42
Summary: Ponders alternate outcomes for certain people involved in the arc from around UXM508-511 wherein Madelyne Pryor gets destroyed (again), and European Psylocke's body and Asian Kwannon's mind get similarly eliminated (again). Comeuppance crashes down on Master Fraction for scripting such swill...as well as on Tracer Land for using the same effing famous face on every female ever.
1. Chapter 1

LAND GRAFTS AND FRACTION REDUCTIONS

By Quillon42

(NB: As with so many of my stories, I cornily, trollily use various units of the United States to represent Marvel writers, pencilers, etc. Here, the Governor of Fractiorida is none other than Matt Fraction, who wrote that X-Story-Arc about five years back wherein Madelyne Pryor led a Sisterhood of Evil Mutants against the Xers while the latter were hanging in San Fran. The Governor of Claudlandorado is Greg Land, who has drawn many female characters to look exactly the same—and in fact has alleged used the face of Claudia Schiffer as a template for these faces. As such, Land has been accused as not so much making faces, but rather traces—tracing the same goddamn contours for every set of femme features.

This story takes shots at both Machine creators, as well as some of the things they did in this story arc particularly, namely the yet-again elimination of Madelyne's character from the ranks of the living, as well as the yet-again jettisoning of European Psylocke's body AND Asian Kwannon's mind. (And I know I did the whole "celebrating Betsy and Kwannon in mind and body alike" thing in my Revanches and Reversions story, as well as in my Queue the Cosmetic Constancy story…and even sort of in my Somnambulance Sovereignty story, as Betsy there hints at her Fraction-forced butchering (not to plug these stories again shamelessly or anything, but…)—however, IMO here it bears repeating again in an effort to hold Fraction as directly responsible for these atrocities as possible.

I really hope you guys enjoy this one, in any case. I'm not writing these stories forever, by the way…I just feel that there are a number of statements I want to get out through them, both positive and negative alike, and this is my medium).

CHAPTER ONE

SOMETIME IN 2009 IN WESTCHESTER, NEW YORK

Although it was effected in the course of one of the lady's most evil iterations, the sight of Madelyne Pryor dying again was rather difficult for Scott Summers to bear this time. Watching her ebbing out in infinitesimal increments, her generous carmine figure erasing here in motion much slower than the relatively rapid vaporization in the 616 sketch of this story, was actually agonizing in fact.

Lady Madelyne, despite her entire existence as a photocopy of a pristine poppyhead known sometimes as Phoenix, had been the first to bear the matrimonial title of Mrs. Cyclops. She and Scott had met back in the Bronze-Age innocence of 1983, and they enjoyed marital bliss for about as long as the contemporaneous Video Game Crash lasted at the time.

Yea, just as Nintendo and ROB came to end said drought of digital diversions, so too did X-Factor and Jean Grey arrive to preempt Miss Pryor's Alaskan Elysium, to wreck her hearty homestead with Scott. Understandably, Madelyne was a bit more than miffed at this, and she came around even to striking deals with demons back in the day (albeit unintentionally), back before a time of Animated Serieses and other unbearable overexposures of the franchise—a much more scandalous and never-revived age of tattered sapphire cloaks, gleaming gold medallions, and almost-unprecedented scantiness of clothing otherwise…all fitting for an unforgettable Goblin Majesty.

But that time was long past as of the moment of this story (as well as the reader's and this author's present)—that Goblin Queen, if not cremated shortly after the Inferno, would today have been as decomposed as the faux Jean that this Maddy found now in the grave not far from Graymalkin Lane. Here and now, upon psionic contact with the corpse, this Red Queen Madelyne, as with the vermilion vixen in 616…she found that her quasi-corporeal self could not quench the thirst for a host body with the inferior shell that Domino had dropped in Jean's coffin, as per Scott's request. Nay, the Sisterhood Mistress of Ceremonies now found herself falling away from life once more, after having foolishly committed herself to the crude crimson carcass before her, a carcass that was no Jean indeed.

Once more, though, in this reality Mad's demoralization proceeded in a pronouncedly more gradual, excruciating way. Scott watched in horror as his former lady not just fading, but fragmenting, the flesh shirking from her face, the clavicle crackling, the breast breaking apart. And he realized here that he couldn't coldly stand by and allow it to continue to happen.

Consequently the Clops leapt into the air once again, as he did so often in missions to tackle someone out of harm's way, to wrest some poor soul from the mandibles of mortality as was the standard procedure for a leader and hero such as himself. It mattered all the more here that the one he was colliding with now, in the course of her dissolution, was a lady for whom he genuinely loved and cared for her own self, as she was, in spite of the jaundice of Jean that ever curdled in the man's mind.

Upon colliding with his once-connubial-companion in her state of disincorporation, Scott found that the two were coming together

[ESSSSSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH]

in a manner most unexpected, the red haze consuming Madelyne in her psychic decay now enveloping the both of them. Each could feel his or her body…shifting into the other's, in a way that went beyond any of the carnal knowledge which each learned from the other.

In the midst of all this, the lady's whitened eyes met with her ex-man's, which were red behind the spectacles…and in the ensuing instants, both their eyes went from these white and red extremes, to an in-between hue of rose. Neither of them noticed, through this supernatural second of eye contact, that their forms were not only melding together—they were also being jaunted from the very confines of the crummy planet Earth upon which their reality was based.

Some beats later an edenic atmosphere, with lush green grass and limpid blue water—but a magenta sky to cap it all—greeted the pair of crushed-together essences that were Scott and Madelyne.

The amalgam of S and M hovered there in the alien air for another moment; then the two became disengaged from one another. Scott looked warily at his once-wife, as she did to him, as their forms floated slowly to the verdant floor of this odd environs.

There was no doubt about the fact that Scott still saw red wherever he looked, behind his quality quartz lenses of the ruby ilk. It was just that…there was no sensation of the pressure that was normally there, between his potent opened eyes and the tough spectacle material.

It was enough to make him take off said glasses, very warily, and ever so squintingly check them, to make sure that something wasn't wrong with the crimson cheaters. He then noted when he opened his eyes, toward the lush verdant floor, that the usual optic emissions weren't coming.

He looked around, away from where he registered Madelyne's form in his peripherals, noting that his ex was just reaching her feet herself. What in the world was going on…

"'Ay, Scotty!"

Said Summers wrenched his head around to acknowledge the postmillennially-malevolent Miss Pryor.

"Believe you're, ahh…looking for something?"

The man looked across to his first spouse and found himself making eye contact with a Red Queen whose eyes now matched her hair—the peepers now poppy even beyond the irises, spilling into the whites.

"I'd say this swap beats even the bodily exchanges we used to have back in the day," said Miss Madelyne, to a rather consternated Summers. "In fact…I don't think I've ever seen so…"

ZARRRRRRK as she lashed out suddenly with her new optic blasts, swiped off of Scott in their interdimensional mingling, the lasers spreading out to make a line in the ground between the woman and her ex-man.

"…ever seen so very clearly, Scott."

Meanwhile, in another dimension much closer to that of the reader's, as well as this author's, most unfortunately, an unscrupulous Governor or two continued their concoction of this awful arc of stories…although here, in this reality, events happened a bit out of time with that of the 616.

At the moment, one European Elisabeth Braddock was about to square off with both James Logan Howlett as well as one Alison Blaire, the good grapity governess about to be maimed well beyond moderation, in keeping with the sickening script of one Governor of Fractiorida. Everything from claws to concussive force blasts would rip apart the face and the body of the Betsy, while within the lady would be facing off with the essence of Kwannon, the Asian assassin whose psyche was as marginalized in the mythos of X as was the original corporeal form of Elisabeth herself.

Because, really: Who the fuck cared about what became of a boring white body, or the mind of some random ass Easterner, when it came to Teh Sexy peanut butter cup combination of a Japanese chick with a British accent.

Even though the idea of the European original's evisceration appalled many an oldtime X-Fan, whatever turned the dual fascistic faucets of sensationalism and sales, it ruled the day. It could happen to anyone of the X, honestly; the atrocities ranged from killing a Jean (again and again and again) to maiming a Betsy to severing the uneasy acquaintanceship between Logan and Scott through a needlessly scandalous Schism.

Meters away from the Caucasian crusader Elisabeth, Alison and Logan alike bristled a bit, uncertain and uneasy about following Fuhrer Fractiorida's dictates regarding what was to go down in the script regarding the old Outback Psylocke. To be certain, older readers who thrilled at the prospect of Psylocke in her older, Anglo mauve maiden form—and who took an overwealth of umbrage at the Nineties tease of said body barging back in as Revanche, only to take an abrupt exit once more shortly thereafter—these readers did not wish to have their chains jerked once again…and for certain, surely the Fraction would not reduce himself to such dreary depths in his narrative.

Miles away from all of this, another awful creator known here as the Governor of Claudlandorado reclined easy in a posh home funded by undeserved wealth, all flowing from the teats of the Machine. Who ever knew that tracing every female face to make Xteen thousand shades of Schiffer would afford someone such a living? When it came to fixing the same fucking supermodel's face to every frau upon the X-Pages at this time, this Governor was a Land of Opportunism indeed.

Within the next several minutes, this egregiously uninventive Governor would be joined by his wife and children in their nightly triple-feature-viewing of _Love Actually,_ _Zoolander,_ and _Black and White_—all of these celluloid charms containing that same face that framed the features of every female in the X-Verse. The man of this house always had to have the visage at the forefront of his art's vision, after all.

As a fire-haired harbinger of fate would have it, though, the story would be shaken up a bit—and all because one Scott Summers, granted through his impulsive actions a new extension on the existence of an old flame.

And now said old flame was still in that magenta-skied milieu of a pocket dimension, staring down her man with eyes of most ebullient ruby, giving Slim the kinds of gazes that he might have foisted upon foes behind his so-solid spectacles all these years.

There were no blasts that burst forth from the maroon maiden's eye sockets, though—only a scarlet stare that held Cyke in place as much as would any telekinetic tethering.

"Kind of a kick that I can control _my_ ocular emissions, isn't it, Scotty?"

Mads followed this terse statement up with a red-eyed wink, then a turn of her head and

ZARRRRRRK

another belted-out bolt that leveled an old, withering tree nearby.

Scott held his hands up, sensing the flavor of fuckedness he was to taste imminently. "Maddy…please…I don't want us to…"

ZARRRRRRK

The original Xer suddenly found his form flopping onto its side as Madelyne impulsively pulverized the large stone upon which her once-husband was propping himself. The queenly former pilot found it rather amusing to see Scott foundering in the rock's remains.

"Scotty, Scotty, Scotty," said the lady, taking a couple haughty steps to approach the Clops, "…I've no interest in…eliminating you, with the very energies that have powered you through so many of your petty mutant pursuits."

Her boots stopped right up against the face of her former spouse. She could feel his useless form beginning to tremble a bit at her feet, not so much from fear as from an overwhelming weight of guilt that galled at him for decades.

"I just think this is a very…interesting development, we've found ourselves in…and I intend to make the most of it."

TO BE CONTINUED


	2. Chapter 2

LAND GRAFTS AND FRACTION REDUCTIONS

By Quillon42

CHAPTER TWO

Outside of this peculiar inside of a remote, diminutive dimension, that rascally reality-tripping rugcutter known as Spiral was weary with worry regarding whatever had happened to Miss Madelyne—the Main Sister who called all the shots. Did she achieve the positioning with the Phoenix Force, an end towards which the entire alliance had endeavored? Was she lost to the no-persons-land of utter nonexistence once more?

The sleek swordswoman flexed onto tiptoe, tapping most rhythmically to try and figure the plane onto which her mistress had moseyed off. Another several score of syncopated steps and she would be able to situate her Queen's locale, then shove off towards it.

FSASSSHHHHH

"Whoa there!"

It was all Mads could do to shake her former spouse off her ankles. In her mind the pictures of the past had faded somewhat, despite all her years of mooning the memories. Perhaps she just selectively allowed it to slip from her brain banks, the fact that Scott could become a kinky effer when one came down to it.

So when she very suggestively hinted to Hubby that she wished for him to kiss her clothed feet, upon pain of punishing blasts—she was a bit more than taken aback to see the Summers slide right into her, baseball style, and lather her leathered legs with a passion-starved tongue (all his escapades with Emma were always so shallow and unfulfilling, compared to those with Miss Pryor). It was enough for the lady to FSASSSHHHHHH off an optic blast into the fuchsia far reaches of this tiny dimension, in spite of herself.

Madelyne found herself almost feeling sorry for Scotty as the man continued to smother her toes with his saliva. She was taken aback when he started reaching up for the riding crop she thought she had so well hidden in the back of her bondagey costume.

"Jesus…Scott!" She just managed to swat the reaching man's hand down.

"I knew it was you, Madelyne…that it was you with the mask on, and coming on like Emma, the other night. …At least I knew, in good time."

Cyke was referencing an encounter with his first spouse a few issues previous, wherein a woman who was apparently Emma, with her face covered in black leather, had lured the man into a tryst in the middle of a moment of high mutant tension. It wasn't actually until the woman had him within her that it came to him to it was in fact Pryor and not Frost—and then when he came in turn, the realization of the reunion made him shudder all the more with gratification.

And now this fearless leader was forlorn and lecherous for this lady once more, she at first startled, then laughingly still trying to shake her man off as he grabbed a lash from her costume and wrapped it around his throat…

"Sss…

"…SsscOTTTT!"

…and this was just at this mirthful moment that Miss Rita Wayward Spiral came tap-tap-tapping on into their dimension.

The dancer's steely eyes locked with those of her rose-cheeked ringleader for a second, the latter looking shocked and off-guard for an offbeat.

Then Madelyne, tightening the lash-leash around her ex's neck and throwing her arms akimbo, she knowing that it would be both her and Slim's necks if she were caught cavorting with the enemy…

"'CAUSE I MAY BE BAD, BUUUT I'M PERFECTLY GOOOOOD AT IT!

"X IN THE AIR, I DON'T CARE I LIKE THE SOOOOUUUND OF IT!

"STICKS AND STONES MAY BREAK MY BONES BUT MUZZLES AND MASKS EX-CITE-MEEEEEE!"

Mads was again taken a bit aback as Scott was really getting into his Perez Hilton role of the man-dog at her feet, the mutant leader flopping around on the ground all too excitedly to play his part as his Queen strutted all about the alternate area. Whatever, she figured, if it worked.

Indeed, at the display of spontaneous sadomasochistic showwomanship coming from her crimson chieftain, Spiral could only cock her head sideways and stare askance for a spell…

…then she shrugged her shoulders, spun about and sparked out of existence once again.

Hushing back to an alternative main Machine Earth, the dancer to her fellow diva Deathstrike:

"Sister Madelyne's really got Scott on the ropes; let's leave her to her delicious little diversions."

To this Yuriko Oyama sniffed noncommittally, then nodded as the two sisters leapt back into their fray against the Xers.

Back in the blush byways of the other, smaller world: Scott grasping once more for his old lover's arms…

"Rihanna doesn't say 'X in the air,' babe…"

"I know, you effing fool." Then throwing herself down on top of Scott:

"It's all because the 'X' you're referring to…well…that's not in the air here, but really all on the ground…"

The two laughed into each other's throats as each found the other's tongue once again, this time on the floor of this puce paradise.

Out in the primary planet that figured into each reality of the Machine's multiverse—this particular reality a bit left of the 616 center—another up-close-and-personal interaction was about to occur…although this one wasn't going to be quite as chummy.

Its level of viciousness, in fact, was one to take aback both the Dazzler as well as the Douche who served as the X's chief crux for far, undeservingly too long.

Said Douche, gritting bitterly and gutturally under his breath: "I don't like it, Ali. Not one little bit."

The blaring blonde, in turn: "I know, Logan. I've followed the Machine's Bullpenshit to the letter for decades now…but the two of us going dutch in defacing the old Betsy…? It doesn't matter if she's Sisterhood—there's got to be another way."

Deep within, Alison knew that the people on the other side of the fourth wall shared her sentiments. For she and the hairy-ass Howlett to tag team their lovely lavender old-school partner with brawl and blast, respectively, would be to act in the worst kind of concert since the time Miss Blaire did backup keyboards for Lila Cheney in the Machine's 214th Uncanny outing.

Each now looked across to the orchid-clad opponent meters away, she seemingly waiting for the clash to commence. However, the truth was that Betsy's attention was really turned inward, as the lady underwent a similar discussion of disquietude with, in this reality that the author cooked up anyway, a female presence all too familiar.

On the astral plane: "Kwannon, I really don't want to do this."

(NB: It's unclear, at least according to the sources this author checked, as to the identity of the opponent spirit within Psylocke, on the astral plane…here, in any case, it's Kwannon, for convenience of the narrative and to back up this author's invective against the Machine).

The shadow spirit nodded, she whose self had been squelched consummately by the machinations of 616. "Believe me, Betsy, I want a fight alright…

"But you're the last lady with whom I would ever throw down. In fact, with you I'd rather play co-op, rather than deathmatch. There are tons of targets out there, after all, which are ripe for my rage…such that there's enough to go around between the both of us."

"And what better way for us to bond all the more," said Elisabeth, finishing her Japanese soulmate's thoughts, "than to take out all of that trash together?"

Kwannon, owning her Asian face once again here in the psychic plane, flashed a naughty smile at Betsy, who was correctly back in her Caucasian form. And these ladies would each carry the comfort of this psychic/corporeal consistency back into the physical world as the white, wondrous Elisabeth and the golden, glorious Kwannon tripped triumphantly out of the astral and into the Earthen.

Within the far more diminutive and damask dimension, though, a pair whose occupants were not long ago at odds…each was now smothering the other with uninhibited affections, the likes of which neither had known so tenderly for so long.

With sincere ardor, the Queen drank in Scott's smooches, and the lady returned the favor more than readily. She knew that her erstwhile spouse had hungered for her more than any other girl—even the goody-shit-shoes herself, from whom the manuscript of Madelyne had been photocopied.

Mad pushed the thoughts of that mood-murdering Marvel Girl aside, in any case, and pulled Slim closer now, the two casting aside their differences to tryst most tightly and triumphantly. As much as she might have superficially reminded the man of his first love, her wiles would make him jettison from his memory forever that four letter cuss beginning with J.

"Madelyne," said Scott now, cuddled in the crook of his ex's arm, "I'm so…I'm so sorry for everything. I was such an ass…such a scumfuck to do what I did. All I ever wanted, all these years, was a chance…a chance to make it all up to you. A chance to set things right."

The lady rubbed the top of the man's back gently, caringly. "…It's alright, Scott. The fact is…after all this time…I'm happy now."

The man glanced up shakily from his place in her arms.

She looked down at him. "I'm just so glad that Fate brought us back together. I want everything to be as it was before."

"So do I, Maddy. You know, I'll tell you…back in Manhattan, when Hell was almost unleashed on Earth…I would honestly, really give my soul to have been in your place, and for you in turn to have been safe and sound. I'm so sorry that you had to go through that."

Madelyne could only look down again, meet Scott's sorrowful gaze, and nod in understanding.

"But…for what it's worth…I never wanted you so badly, in love and in lust, as I did back then. Again, if I could, I would have traded my soul for yours, and become damned…but God I just wanted to jump to the top of the transformed Empire State Building, noogie my brother and knock him out, and just…jump your bones, like you did me a few minutes ago just now."

The Queen rubbed the top of Slim's back a little faster, then kissed his forehead warmly.

"It's like…compared to how you looked…to how you just…came off, back then…Jean herself in her X-Factor gear, she looked like fucking Ronald McDonald's concubine in contrast. She had nothing on yo…"

At this the Queen whipped Scott around and threw herself into an embrace of limbs and lips.

A few moments later, Scott, holding and beholding his lovely wife of long ago: "Well…what about the Sisterhood, Maddy? Your plans with them, and…"

"Ahh, the Sisterhood is like…Britney Spears…_Crossroads_ bullshit. Like, seriously. I don't need them."

In the amaranth air, a serene beat passed. Then:

"Know, too, Scott…I don't need you, either."

Madelyne fixed a hard, insanely-serious look on her man as she said this.

"I'm grateful for your saving me, back in the graveyard about an hour ago. I am. …But we're only here together, and grafting a homestead onto this pocket dimension, because I'm allowing it. This second chance is entirely mine to give…and mine to take away, too. So you'd better not hurt me this time."

Nodding sincerely, Scott leaned toward his lady and kissed her deeply, passionately.

About three minutes later, settling down, Her Majesty held Scott a foot away. Locked upon his now-ineffectual eyes with emerald orbs of her own that now housed the man's mutant talent as well.

"Scott," she said, rubbing the man's clasped-together hands lightly, "…I'm really glad we're back again.

"I'm so glad, in fact…

"That I'm confident, now, that you're going to be everything you should have been, all those years back. I've decided, you see, to take it upon myself…"

[SSSNAP]

"To make it all as it had been before…as we were, then…"

Around Scott he noted the Eighties Alaskan homestead environs which he once occupied with his lady, in the throes of retirement bliss. The stark residential architecture, with its spacious floors, its wide windows, and its peculiar triangular roof was all back now, after all this time in which it only existed as a burning brand in Scott's memory. The man was decked out now in those same denims and leather jacket that he had then, as well as the squarical shades he sported back in that day—not that he needed, now, to hold back any kind of energies, of course. The sky outside still maintained its magenta magnificence.

Scott turned again and beheld Madelyne now, the lady dressed in the same brown jacket, blue jeans, and bowly Louise Simonson hairstyle she had back then—back when she was so much more innocent. But it was not so much what the lady was wearing, that struck him most…

…but rather, what she was now holding.

"Goo…goo goo…"

The lady's former hate-and-stress-streaked face now yielded to a serene peacefulness. Her voice was warm and calming. "Look who's here, Scott!"

Looking up at the man was the one who would, in a far-flung time, become that gray, gruff, gritting warrior whose codename suggested an alternative to local television programming, but instead was supposed to represent the link between the present and that which was yet to come.

Here, though, he was back as Scott and Madelyne originally knew him, as an ordinary, innocuous, smelly-ass toddler.

Before Slim could say anything, Maddy sloughed the slobbering Askani's Son into the man's arms. "You're gonna learn that with great parenting comes great responsibility, Scotty," she said, adapting a line uttered ad infinitum by the husband of another great redhead of the Machine. "I know that, with all the demons that have been haunting you regarding what you did to us back then, you'll be sure not to completely fuck it up this time.

"'Specially 'cause I've got my eye on you now." She punctuated this with another vermilion wink with an eye that could optically blast the man out of existence at any second.

Decades into and five minutes ago in the future, a rabbleroused resistance rose once more against a viciously-jawed villain known to people of all ages as Apocalypse. At the front lines were one Nathan Christopher Summers and his tremendously daring, yet terribly designed operatives who functioned more than anything to fight alongside their grizzled, gray-bearded leader.

At this point the mavericks of the morrow had the evil En Sabah Nur on the proverbial ropes, they endeavoring through the ordeal with ordnance to cow an entire nation of cads like the old, ever-untiring 'Lypse.

Among these heroes was one young woman with a scalp of scarlet locks, who was allegedly of the elder Summers's lineage and whose methods could not possibly be questioned or contradicted.

Nearby, a young lady of Nubian descent, who incidentally had the same name as the One Not To Be Questioned, had committed the indubitable folly of calling her Caucasian nomenclatural counterpart on a certain military maneuver.

"Hope," said Hope, the latter more obscure in the face of the former's obnoxiously-overexposed existence, "I don't believe that attempting to charge in blindly against Apocalypse, even at this point, is the most advisable…"

This was answered immediately by the White Hope's grabbing the Black Hope by the scruff of the latter's greenish, midriff-baring half-vest with one hand, and forcing the obscure one's face against a fuming laser rifle barrel with the other.

"I don't remember where it says in any of my prophecies that my actions can be subject to review and commentary by others, Novitiate," said Popular Hope, the girl already getting off on the power-tripping she relished in pushing around other members of her team. She then shoved the other girl away abruptly. "So you can keep your fucking criticisms to your own damn self."

And with this, the redheaded roustabout started another rush against Señor Nur once more. And readers on the other side of the fourth wall were not at all surprised or shocked by the unfortunately-familiar Hope's behavior, as what just happened was exactly what occurred when she shunted Scott Summers's face against the end of her gun, during the heat of the legendary 237th Legacy adventure—and there it was completely acceptable, of course, for such bullying to exist in the name of female empowerment, as well as eternally dumping all over the Slim team leader as has been the norm for the last decade and a half.

Here, with the other, Obscure Hope, of African descent, there was no such demographic justification…but readers at this juncture looked the other way as well, as accustomed as they were to automatically giving young carrot-top Hope a pass for everything humanly conceivable.

Nearby, the utterly-unclunkily-named Tetherblood was loading magazines into oversized, overstylized arquebi while his daughters, Fettersweat and Harnesstears, were struggling dually to overcome Apocalypse's barrages as well as the inner opprobria they felt at being so awkwardly named. But this was the casual by-product of being designed in the Nineties, where garish crass appearances and godawful compound appellations ruled the day.

These dozen-letter-codenamers all cast aside their concerns, though, at the heart-stopping frightly sight of their leader, Cable, dissipating before their very eyes.

Everyone's favorite freedom-fighting old fart had felt it too, as he began to make like Marty McFly during the middle of that rendition of "Earth Angel." "Keep fighting, all!" hollered Cable, in vain as he continued to vanish before them. "We shall reach victory in the ennnnn*"

From face to face among the troops, a look of consternation and dread reigned. The only one present to enjoy an opposite expression was En Sabah himself.

"YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!" he crowed, gloating in what would now be his imminent victory over the resistance.

In direct dialogue to the evil one's interjection, the troops, collectively:

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! NAAAAATHAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNN!"

Without their fearless leader, the heroes had had it for certain. Silo threw his hands to his face bitterly while Eleven registered nothing, but wept inwardly and ruefully.

They all looked to one another, and found only the same forlorn faces that each knew that he or she was wearing. It was really the end now…

…but then…

A certain contemptible redhead, she now too looking desperately at her evanescing hands, realizing that she was about suffer the same fate as her father.

"Ohhhhh nooooo guyyyyyys…" cried the Brat White Hope, as her image continued to evaporate before everyone's unbelieving eyes. "I'm alllllso fading out of exisssssten*"

It must have been the result of some sort of unlikely time paradox, in which the semi-daughter of the Askani's Son must have been erased as a result of her quasi-father's abrupt trip back to the present time of his parents, Scott and Madelyne.

What a surprising happenstance. Huh.

The heroes looked to one another, at this, and then to Apocalypse; then the wicked warlord back to them.

Both sides, simultaneously:

"_YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!"_

Surfy music started up out of nowhere, and everyone erupted into epilepsies of ecstasy, as the spark was set off. Without that scarlet scar of a soldier on the scene, the entire ensemble could now relish the passing of their universe's greatest threat.

People from the creatively-named "Jenskot" (a girl who enjoyed an identity inspired by a combo of the names "Scott" and "Jean"…how earth-shatteringly inspired) to Boak, that stupid-looking guy with the 3D-glasses-hues for eyes and microchips for hair (see the cover of 1993's Cable #1 to find out what in the blue fuck this author's talking about), they all started stripping and waving their pants in circular motions over their heads while others began making out and just full-out making love. Garrison Kane started getting it on with Dawnsilk, while the latter's sons, Suppercorduroy and Recessvelcro, began chugging down what appeared to be beer coming out of a transformed-Apocalypse's nether turret.

In truth, this last was nothing more than the ancient enemy's Number One bodily fluid, but a) there were leagues of lagers over the ages that tasted the same way, so who could tell the difference; and b) at the risk of sounding like a certain Angry Video Game someone or other, these toughs of tomorrow would all rather drink Apocapiss anyway than spend another second with Hope Effing Summers. So nobody at all really minded any of what was happening, in the end.

But speaking of dumping on certain infamous Summerseseseseseseseseseseseseseses…

"Dah-Dah…

"DAH-Dah…"

Where could one now find the aforementioned old fart? None other than in diapers, and about ninety years younger, an infant once more and perched atop the small of the back of his foolish fail of a father, the hapless Scotty on his stomach and suffering the full weight of his baby son upon his lumbar.

The man's lady Madelyne watched in abject amusement as their boy commenced to drum upon his pop's pate with meaty toddler paws, with each of the following capitalized and italicized _DAH_s marking a moment in which little Nathan Chris was slapping batteringly on Cyke's brow with both of his pudgy palms:

"_DAH_-Dah _DAH-_Dah _DAH_-DAH…

"_DAH DAH DAH DAH DAH DAH DAH DAH DAH DAH…DAHHH!_"

This last with a triumphant baby grin as the littlest Cable rested his smothering infant hands over Scott's ineffective eyes and looked over to his mother for approval. The smacked-into-submission father beneath the babe could only lie there and take it, the man knowing that this was a light castigation compared to what he really deserved from his family here.

"Wow, Nathan!" pepped Mads, nodding and clapping with approbation at her son's energy, "I was thinking of doing all that to him myself…but you literally beat me to the punch…or slap, I suppose!"

"Eh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh!" guffawed the child in his victory over the Clops. Neither of his parents, in truth, could ever remember him being so tickled. "EEYOOOMMM!" he then cried, nonsensically, in his own little infantile tongue.

And then

[PFLPFLPFLFLPFLFLFPLFLFPLFPFLPFLPFLP]

Nathan's entire weight seemed to shift suddenly, slightly atop Scott, as if his son were becoming heavier in the bottom…

…but then the man knew exactly what it was, especially upon the other, er…sensory cues to give it away.

Madelyne just kept on laughing, though, as she waved a rosy palm in front of her beautiful face. "Awwwww…looks like…well, _smells_ like, really…that little Nathan was so excited about giving his first asskicking…that he just gave out a literal assload of something else!"

"Eh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh!" chortled the babe again in assent.

His mother then fixed his newly-minted mutant eyes upon Scott. With a deliciously tormenting inflection, as she leaned in toward her fellow parent's defeated face:

"Guess who's changing him…"

And then another crimson wink.

TO BE CONCLUDED


	3. Chapter 3

LAND GRAFTS AND FRACTION REDUCTIONS

By Quillon42

CHAPTER THREE

Out in the overarching, 616-Prime-Variant place, a certain songstress and a rather crappy scrapper fixed to float their clandestinely-planned plot into motion. Specifically, Babe Blaire and Hooligan Howlett lived up to their last names (or at least a syllable of such) by blaring, howling out into the open air…

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!"

And at this the Governor of Fractiorida up and took note…as none of this played out in his acetic script, he realized from his side of the fourth wall.

The aforementioned hollering ratcheted up Dazzler's inner aural energies, as well as Logan's inner feral ones. So pumped, the latter let the lady go first as Alison belted out with a spontaneous blast

[FSSSSSSSSSSAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH]

which weakened a wall of the structure within which they were standing. Acknowledging that the partition now appeared to be pulped to the degree of recycled Nineties comic book paper, Logan let loose with a clawed lunge

[RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP]

that rent the barrier asunder altogether. Without missing a beat the overhyped aggressor then reached deep into the fissure…

…and pulled out none other than the fracking abovementioned Governor himself.

As the bewildered buffoon lay dazed at Dazz's feet, the mutant mistress, extending a hand downward to grab the "man" by the scruff of his neck:

"Didn't think we'd have the oomph to utter you into our own universe, didja? Felt oh so safe, you did, on your side of the wall!"

When the semi-man reached his feet, he looked around wildly, desperately. Feared insanely for his seemingly-soon-to-be-curtailed existence. Admitted at the bottom of his psyche that the colors and other effects all around him came off so much more vibrantly "in person" than they ever could in the Machine bullpen's offices.

Then Logan waved a clawed hand in front of the Fraction's face, and the latter was brought fully back to the immediacy of his predicament.

By the brunt of Howlett's other gripping fist, the Governor was forced to look over painfully at a stressing European Psylocke, writhing in psychic agony over in the corner. "Look at 'er! She ain't too fond of the position you're puttin' her in! And frankly, neither are we! Betts is fightin' it all she can, the need to conform to the awful edicts of your script…"

"And so are we, in our own way," finished Miss Blaire as she blew out a couple more walls, to completely air out the atmosphere. All around, what sounded like the screams and cries of so many young people, from some kind of distant universe, had issued forth, the noise almost deafening.

Ali stepped up to the diatribe mic once more, the tones jolting up the juice within her all the more. "You hear that, guy?! All this…it's the sounds of your readers, everywhere…finding it a mite distasteful that the old, white Betsy-body ends up trashed, the way it is—eviscerated with claws…blasted with lasers…impaled with the woman's own psychic knife."

She paused to take in the overture all around her a bit more. Then: "…You know, though, we gotta admit, it's really a rather…colorful way to go, for a body. And, in fact, in the end…we really don't want such an idea to go to waste!"

"So we figured, why don't we leave in the idea of the claws and lasers and knives and such…" Logan spat, looking somewhat crazed, somewhat complacent, "but have the very mind that made up the massacre…enjoy his very ideas firsthand…"

Fractiorida then turned on a hinky heel to run, but Logan held him fast with hairy-ass arms…then held him down.

Psylocke's once-writhing body finally started to settle as Alison took position with pulsing fingers directly in front of the wacky writer. "No…" was all he could manage.

And then, just as the lady of light said, just before following through with the script in the miserable-mainstream 616 world, when she ripped into the original Psylocke-form with her lasers:

"Yeah." Ali aimed directly at the top half of the target's body, fixing fully for a Fraction fatality:

"HELL YEAH!"

The brilliance of the lightshow that ensued and consumed the Governor…the spectacle of it was enough to burn through the largest television screen that the Claudlandorado clan had owned. You see, that fam had been two-thirds through _Zoolander_ when all of a sudden their Schiffer-tracer's triple feature had been preempted by the televising of the Fractiorida execution.

Incredulously the Land household's head and Bullpen's hack leveled his clicker to guide his kin away from the awful sight…only to find that the remote was as unresponsive as Cyke was mutant-impotent (as of now, in this story, anyway). The alleged penciler continued to thumb furiously, futilely at the small device while throwing a look to his left, at Mrs. Land on the loveseat…

…when, of a sudden, he was in shock to find sitting in her place a particular German model, of whom the "man" was so fond that he implicitly dedicated every female face he'd ever eked out by designing it in her image. Experiencing a certain explosion in his nether area at this, but ignoring it all the same, the Governor trotted on over to speak with the siren…

…only to discover that it was not the sexual goddess herself who usurped his wife's position, but rather something much less dimensional, a cardboard cutout of the Claudia instead. Something almost as flat and insubstantial as the man's own drawings, in fact.

At this the Gov whirled to look down at his two spawn…only to find miniature counterparts to that pasteboard horror that supplanted his squeeze. They too, like the one who subbed out his wife, were beaming back at him with that same ghastly-inverted-triangular Schifferian smile.

Panicking, this Land of Imposture ran for the bathroom, feeling his face as he went and fearing the worst as the skin was smoother to the touch than he ever remembered. He hadn't even shaved for a few days—as busy as he had been with his legions of line-tracings—and the stubble he'd expected this instant just wasn't there.

It was when Land found grafted onto his face that same superhumanly-familiar grin—the exact one that he'd grinded out in hundreds of panels. The realization of this too-intimate identification with the object of the man's adoration was too much even for him—so much so that the alleged artist considered ending it all by way of an intestinal purge that would make even his ivory-toothed idolatress blush.

Back at the fete at which the Fraction was so unceremoniously, ungracefully reduced to the point of nullification altogther, a burly Wolf and a blarey woman reveled in the reckoning that the writer so deserved.

Kicking back a bit, Logan cracked open a cold one, and Alison popped open a Pepsi Free delivered unto her by a warping-in Fallen Angels Ariel (and unlike Marty McFly in 1955, Ali wouldn't have to pay for it). (Nevermind.) Just as Howlett took a second to mentally celebrate the fact that his brew didn't spritz into his face, given the fact that his raucous throwdown with Deathstrike an hour ago had at one point resulted in his being slammed hard against the fridge…

[SPRSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH…]

…of a sudden another of the walls nearby opened without warning, and a thick, viscous red fluid washed over the Wolvy One thoroughly. Before he knew it, the ubiquitous douchebag was colored more crimson than Betty Ross's most recent (and omnipresent) alter ego. "What the flamin'…?!"

Alison nearby shook her head in confusion for an instant…

…then completely waved it off (as anyone should do with Logan anymore) and waltzed over with her cola to the lavender-haired lovelies who were chilling in the corner. By this juncture, Betsy and Kwannon had settled matters at last, after so many years of yearning for one another's bodies in the most platonic sense possible (as the bottom line was that each wished for a corporeal communion that would bring her back to her true self).

"It's just good to be home," said Kwannon, and Betts nodded in assent as the former was back to her Japanese self inside and out, and the latter was full-blooded British once more, from bod to brain. And although this author delved in such outcomes before in an earlier, Revision-ary story a year ago…the idea bears repeating in this case, to rebut the overly presumptuous idea forwarded by the Fraction: that a body other than one's original could be considered "home."

In any case, as well, the dual crimes of the flaying of Betsy's fair European figure, as well as the flinging away of Kwannon's fine Asian mind, were now answered for in this reality by a Fraction reduced to the lowest common denominator—at this point mere atoms, swirling around the Sisterhood stomping grounds.

And speaking of Sisterhood siblings, both extant and defected…

"Really it was so much fun to spray him just now," said the Red Queen to her cycloptic consort, speaking of the sprinkling she unleashed upon the clawed cootie paragraphs ago. Scott was still in the middle of giving Chris a new pair of baby undies, and wishing that his sense of smell were rendered as defunct as his destructive optic abilities. "I did it as a favor to you, Scotty…now that Howlett's doused with the Redpellent, ain't no scarlet-locked lady gonna go for him. If Jean comes back again, she'll Schism herself so far away from his ass just from the odor alone.

"I know it gets _under_ your skin, after all…the idea that Logan could end up with the miserable Marvel Girl. So as a reconciliation gift to you…I got a little something _onto_ the idiot's skin in turn."

Scott laughed heartily for the first time in this pocket-place—and really for the first time perhaps in a Machine millennium. (For sure, under the regime of a certain Schifferian semblance of an "artist," he'd shown his fair share of supermodel smiles…and also terrible Seventies hair for some reason…but laughing had been long gone in his life, partly from the guilt he'd girded upon himself from hurting Maddy and Chris so long ago).

Nothing made him relax more at this juncture, though, than the placid grin of his first wife before him right now. "It's all gonna be so good, Scott," she said, winding her arm around his waist as the two looked out to the same home and hearth they enjoyed in the first X-Factor issue, back in '86. "Just…I'm effing warning you: Don't hurt me and our son again."

Madelyne didn't have to flash fuchsia in the eyes for Scott to say warmly, back to her, "No way, Mads…we're in this one together now."

Just then at that moment

FSSSSSSSSSSAAAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHH

the couple was greeted by the entire contingency of one sultry siblinghood wondering where its head had gone off to. Chimera and maybe Lady Mastermind (this author can never remember where she hell she figures into anything) and Martinique Whoever and Deathstrike were all stymied at the sight before them—but none of them more shocked than Spiral, who seconds later started going through the motions of some sort of transformative spell to bring Madelyne's mind corruptively back to their side.

But then Madelyne herself cut off the overtures of Mojo's main maiden with a wave of her hand and a full opening of her eyes. "_Let'sssthh go, gurlsssthh,_" she lisped most Britneically, Maddy gleefully imitating the by-default- most-memorable line of Spears's insufferable film trailer (to say nothing about the insufferability of the film itself…not that this author has seen it or anything) as the Queen shot out against all her "Sisters" with the optic abilities she inherited from her husband. Mads set the ensuing blast only to stun, but she effectively shunted them all out of the pocket dimension while Spiral's interdimensional portal behind the ladies was still ajar.

Satisfied, Lady Pryor turned to her husband and jumped into his arms. "Come on, Scotty…let's shimmy out some more Summerses together while little Nathan's still asleep in the crib."

EPILOGUE

And what of the other love interests of the Paradoxical Man-Whore of Commitment that was Cyclops?

As those who read this arc are aware, there was a moment in which one White, Frosty blonde regent was lying in a small pocket locale of her own, she doing all she could to garner energy against the enemy. Along came a certain cosmically-endowed chick who was adored abnormally by so many (including this author, admittedly), who sparked a bit of the Beatific Barbecue Bird within Emma. For some reason, though, Jean in this instance was utterly unclothed upon this transaction, which struck this author as odd and unnecessary.

(Be sure to look out for a possible sequel to Nuke-Nudes Forever this fall or winter, by the way, as this author keeps carping about but may or may not deliver on).

As with the other aspects of the aforesaid arc, though, here matters played out a bit differently. Just as Jean was about to deliver that one command to arouse Emma to action…

"Prepar…"

The vanilla virago stood, spun around, and shed all her fabric effects in turn, she facing the Phoenix in just an au naturel condition.

"Oh, darling," said Emma, spreading her arms welcomingly, throwing the slyest grin, and winking more weightily than any of the blast-imbued optic tics Madelyne's gave Scott, in this story, "All this time I've just been so fucking _ready_."

THE END


End file.
